Objectives

This course introduces and explains the AIX system from an operational perspective.

On successful completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

• use AIX documentation
• navigate around the AIX directory structure
• create, copy and move files and directories
• understand AIX file permissions
• use the vi editor
• list and control processes
• understand and use AIX metacharacters
• create login profiles
• use system administration tools
• configure hardware and storage
• configure and control filesystems
• perform system and filesystem backups
• run scheduled tasks.

Main topics

• Introduction and orientation

AIX components; logging in and out of an AIX system; command structure; using keyboard control characters; using mail; using online documentation.

• Files & directories

Files and directories: what are they?; the important AIX directories; relative vs full paths; copying, moving, creating and deleting files & directories; displaying text files; useful file utilities; the find command; hard vs soft links.

• Permissions

Permission concepts; directory vs file permissions; changing permissions; controlling default permissions with umask.

• Using vi

Open files and insert text; create and edit files; learn the most important survival commands; save changes.

• Shell metacharacters

Why metacharacters; u sing wildcards for filenames; command redirections; combining commands with pipes; using command and variable substitution; disabling metacharacters.

• Initialisation scripts

Aliases; shell functions; setting and exporting variables; configuring the shell with set; using .profile and .kshrc for customising the environment.

• Processes

Process structure; list and control processes; using nice and renice; run background jobs.

• System admin tools

Using smit; text vs GUI smit; u sing webmin; don't forget the command line.

• Hardware administration

The role of the ODM; the structure of the /dev directory; how cfgmgr works; hardware states; listing, adding and configuring hardware; physical vs AIX location codes.

• Disk management

Creating and configuring Volume Groups; creating and configuring Logical Volumes; striping and mirroring Logical Volumes; where LVM information is held.

• Using jfs2

The structure of the jfs2 filesystem; concepts of journaling; creating, mounting, unmounting and resizing jfs2 filesystems; /etc/filesystems; running fsck; setting up filesystems quotas; monitoring filesystems.

• System backup and recovery

Archiving devices; backing up and restoring Volume Groups with mksysb and savevg; full and incremental backups of filesystems; how to restore a filesystem; using jfs2 splitcopy.

• Scheduling Jobs

Using crontab, and at; security issues; using /etc/qconfig as a batch processor.